"The Faust Cycle" now on Ubuweb

"The Faust Cycle", the epic 14 hour adventure for sound by Ergo Phizmiz (made between 2006-2009 and originally released on Headphonica), has now been added to the archives of Ubuweb.

Direct link here.

Ergo Phizmiz 2010 Retrospective

2010 has been a very busy year indeed in Phizmiz towers, so we thought it an opportune moment for a flashback...

"The Faust Cycle"

The year began with the release on Headphonica of "The Faust Cycle", Ergo's epic 15 hour adventure in sound, released under for free under a Creative Commons license. The album has now been downloaded by in excess of 5,000 listeners, and has been broadcast on stations across the globe. Although generally ignored by the conventional media, the enlightened blogosphere acclaimed the work wholeheartedly, with Continuo describing the piece as "the most ambitious music project conceived in the 21st century and certainly the only one able to change your listening habits." Download "The Faust Cycle" at Headphonica. This was shortly followed by a remix project "The Faust Re.Cycled", also available at Headphonica here.

"The Mourning Show"

The Mourning Show from Tête à Tête on Vimeo.

Ergo Phizmiz's opera about radio, magic, death and UK radio DJ Chris Evans was commissioned by and premiered at De Player in Rotterdam, with further performance in Nijmegen and Brussels. Vital Weekly described it as "an excellent opera which brought plunderphonics to a new level". The show received it's UK premiere in August, at Tete-a-Tete: The Opera Festival.

"Things To Do and Make"

Ergo's pop album was released on Care in the Community Recordings earlier in the year to widespread critical acclaim. Pennyblack Music said "The first major and mainstream Ergo Phizmiz album may be a small independent release, but this album goes to show how major record companies have lost touch completely. It's the kind of listening experience that will force you to shut down your mobile and close your Twitter and Facebook accounts." The album can be bought at the majority of music retailers online and in some shops, whatever they are....

"The Keystone Cut-Ups"

People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz "Blue Moon" [2010] from Vicki WFMU on Vimeo.

The long running collaboration between Ergo Phizmiz & collagist People Like Us continued in the form of "The Keystone Cut-Ups", an A/V work playing with the relationships between early silent cinema and Surrealist cinema. The piece was commissioned by and premiered at Berwick Film & Media Festival, with further performances scheduled for 2011.

"Music For The Jilted Generation"

Continuing his long line of albums of cover versions of popular classics, the marvellous UpItUp Records released Ergo Phizmiz's retake for acoustic instruments of the entirety of The Prodigy's "Music For The Jilted Generation". This release also came with a handy zip file of all of Ergo's cover versions from 2003-2010, and you can grab it all, free, here.

"Collected Sound Installations"

Surrism-Phonoethics recently released Ergo Phizmiz's Collected Sound Installations from 2001-2010, 4.5 hours of Ergo's most experimental music including "Forest", "The Phantom Organ" and "Music For Squares and Spinning". You can grab that, for free, right here.

Chinstrap - The netlabel from Ergo Phizmiz

Since January Ergo has been running a free, Creative Commons netlabel. Now with 15 published releases, the label has put out work by artists including Oblivian Substanshall, Vulnavia Vanity, Angela Valid, The Travelling Mongoose, and The Superfools, including soundtracks, children's music, musique-concrete, sampling, improvisation, radio-art and songwriting. You can download all releases from the Chinstrap blog, which can also be accessed in one convenient list here.

And more ....

This year Ergo also ..... received a grant to produce a new work called "Fulcanelli's Shoes" which premieres in February 2011; played live shows across the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain; composed additional music for Frankie Boyle's "Tramadol Nights" on Channel 4; re-released remastered versions of archive pieces including "M: 1000 Year Mix" & "Cinemacollages"; a sound-installation for the Depozitory on the Isle of Wight; and received the Special Mention in composed radio for his work "Paul Klee, a Balloon, the Moon, Music and Me" at the Prix Italia. This year he has been written about in The Guardian, The Times, The Wire, and Mojo magazine, aswell as comprehensive interviews on Tokafi, Popshifter, and Intangible23.

The year ends with a Christmas Eve mix from Ergo Phizmiz on Tom Ravenscroft's BBC 6Music show, which you can find out all about here.

Wishing you all a marvellous end of the year, and a excellent next one....

Ergo Phizmiz interviewed by Ayoze Garcia

On a recent trip to Barcelona Ergo Phizmiz was interviewed in-depth on the telephone by Ayoze Garcia on Intangible23, who earlier in the year wrote detailed analyses of every episode of "The Faust Cycle".

The interview, which spans Ergo's "Collected Sound Installations", the album "Things to Do and Make", the death opera "The Mourning Show", and netlabel Chinstrap, features Spanish language text, with English language audio of the interview. You can read / listen here.

Ergo Phizmiz in Sync : 2 - Jared Brandle's films to "The Faust Cycle"

Film-maker Jared Brandle has been producing a series of fascinating films to elements from Ergo Phizmiz's 14 hour work "The Faust Cycle". We are delighted to present these beautiful pieces here.....

Four Golden Nuggets on the Seventh Day of September

A few nuggets of delight we ought to mention ....

Soundart Radio are broadcasting Ergo Phizmiz's piece "The Faust Cycle" in chunks of one hour, on Mondays at 11pm GMT for the next 14 weeks. So if you've never had the time to sit and listen to whole bloody big whack, you can now do the digestible version via this marvellous and always unpredictable station.

Tobias Fischer's in-depth interview with Ergo Phizmiz about "The Faust Cycle", previously available in a German language version in Beat Magazine, is now available online in an English version. You can read the article here. If you've never heard the piece, this article provides a good introduction to it, and is the most detailed look at the process of it's creation around.

Composer and artist Greta Pistaceci has published an interview with Ergo Phizmiz on Popshifter. Subtitled "A Play in Three Acts", the interview takes the form of a number of dialogues between Greta as Ergo & Ergo as Greta, The A-Band as Winnie the Pooh & Ergo as Arcimboldo, and Greta as Gertrude the Duck & Ergo as a Residents Spokesperson.

On 15th September, on WFMU, Do Or DIY with People Like Us will feature the premiere broadcast of Ergo Phizmiz's puppet-opera score for Buchinger's Boot Marionettes "The Snow Flea".

"Join Ergo Phizmiz in the studio for this week's DO or DIY featuring the premiere broadcast of the entirety of Ergo Phizmiz's score for "La Puce de Neige" ("The Snow Flea"), a mime puppet-opera for Buchinger's Boot Marionettes, which premiered in Marseille, November 2009. The show, created for children, tells the story of Kerugug, a snow flea who in the Arctic who is displaced to Antartica through a hole in the world, and his journey back - with an evil ice-cream in hot pursuit, sneaking snow fleas to use as anti-freeze in his produce. The piece combines field-recordings of Inuit folk songs with a memetic score that references Mussorgsky, Moondog, French folk songs, Augustus Pablo, Prokofiev, Strauss, and Raymond Scott."

V/A "The Faust Re.Cycled" out now on Headphonica

Earlier this year the exquisite Headphonica released “The Faust Cycle”, a 14+ hour dream fable of speech, songs, collage and sound-design by Ergo Phizmiz & Friends. From Headphonica:

"The diversity and oddness of sounds and harmony literally cried for being remixed. So did the snippets & samples Ergo provided for this remix project.

Now here they are ..."




Download "The Faust Re.Cycle" at Headphonica

Featuring Anton, Motokoishii, 1983, Lezet, Seiei Jack, Monos, Satanicpornocultshop, Goines ma non Troppo, Simone Genesi, Traqueurs De Combes, Tozz Rox, The Truth About Frank, Schizoid Cosmos, Broken Hours, Panda Paranoico, Vladislav Nogin, Dinty Slop, Winterberg, The Mueslimen, Hochgobernitz, and Gurdonark for the remixes, and once again marvellous artwork from Moritz Grunke

Ergo Phizmiz news, mid 2010

Eventful times ahead, and here at Phizmiz towers we find ourselves at a strange juncture, so what better time than to update on impending goodness and gracious...

"The Mourning Show" - Ergo Phizmiz's new opera about UK radio DJ Chris Evans' opens May 8th 2010 at DePlayer, Rotterdam, with a couple of European dates programmed around it. It is anticipated the opera will tour the UK and Europe later in the year. It will be presented alongside new A/V material, DJ sets, and collages.

"Things to Do and Make" - After many delays the album of eccentric pop music will be released by Care In The Community Recordings in July. Many of the songs will be familiar to anyone who's seen Ergo play live over the past couple of years, including "Mandrill", "Busby Berkeley", "Late", and "The Dapper Transvestite". Londoners can amuse themselves in a few weeks by spotting Ergo walking up and down Oxford Street with a big sign.

"Music For The Jilted Generation" - A new cover of the entirety of The Prodigy's seminal 1990s dancefloor filler will be released free by UpItUp Records in May, alongside a collection of all of Ergo's covers projects from 2002-2010.

"Toped Buts" - a new album of instrumental music and improvisation will be released as a limited edition CDr on Cataclyst Records imminently. Tracks include "Pajamas for His Apprentice", "Bally Buttons", and "Socks Reggae".

"The Faust Cycle" has continued to garner great reviews around the blogosphere. Take a peep at one of the most recent, at Continuo. And for readers in Deutschland, you could do worse than pick up the latest issue of Beat Magazine, which features a long interview with Ergo about the creation of this 15 hour slab of audio beef.

Chinstrap - Ergo's free, Creative Commons netlabel Chinstrap is at Chinstrapmusic.blogspot.com, with new releases due from Angela Valid and Plushgoolash.

Ergo is also working on new material for the work-in-progress The Old Man Of The Mountain of Patrick Sims & Les Anticliastes Marionettes; the early stage planning for a mechanical opera about the English clown Joseph Grimaldi; and a new album of experimental pop and sound-design.

The Faust Re.Cycled

From Headphonica:

“The Faust Re.Cycled” is a remix-project in connexion with the the biggest/hughest creative commons release so far: “The Faust Cycle” by Ergo Phizmiz [myspace.com/ergophizmiz], released on [you guessed it] www.headphonica.com on January 1st 2010.

“The Faust Cycle” is an extraordinary album as it embodys 14+ hours [!] of music surrounding the phantastic fable about the house of Dr. Faustus - it is a “musical-comedy of disorientation and magick, somewhere between nightmare and the half-remembered childhood whimsy of an insomniac music-hall artiste”.
more information can be found here:
http://www.headphonica.com/?p=816

where you can also download the whole piece for free in various formats:
- mp3 [5 chunks / 2 GB]
- FLAC [in one piece / 4 GB]
- ogg [in one piece / 800+ MB]
not to forget the marvellous artwork [DIN A3, 2sided, pdf/jpg/gif]. now it's time to remix it:

so here you are:
http://www.headphonica.com/datas/The_Faust_Re-Cycle.zip
includes 62 samples and snippets from the original mastertapes, compressed in mp3/320kbps.
you can also cut out whatever you like from the released 14+hours and reconstruct it.
if you need something very special, please contact the duke of phizmiz himself: ergophizmiz@googlemail.com

so, take the samples and do whatever you like.
there are already many genres/styles in the original Faust Cycle - it’s up to you to transfer this samples into something new: invent new genres now.
click, create, communicate.

please send your remixes to:
headphonica@gmx.net

as we'd like to normalize the remixes before publishing them it's neccessary that you send it in WAV-quality / uncompressed. you can use www.sendspace.com / www.yousendit.com / www.megaupload.com or any free service like that and just post us the download-link.
if you have more than 300MB to send us we recommend http://www.mammutmail.com/en/ which takes up to 1GB


DEADLINE for submissions is april 30th.

“The Faust Re.Cycled” will be released including your remix on may 21st on Headphonica

The Faust Cycle, broadcast on Radio Sitka, Poland

Radio.Sitka are broadcasting "The Faust Cycle" in it's entirety across one day, on Friday 29th January, with a full repeat the next day.

From 10am CET, until around 1am. More information (Polish language) here.

Listen at Radio.Sitka

The Faust Cycle over 14 days at Cerebralrift.org

Cerebralrift.org are breaking up Ergo Phizmiz's 14 hour sound piece "The Faust Cycle" across 14 days, and reviewing it as it goes along. Today is day three.

Keep up to date at Cerebralrift.

Two Songs from The Faust Cycle

Two songs from the 14 hour audio adventure The Faust Cycle, by Ergo Phizmiz.

The first is an argument between a pantomime God & Devil, accompanied by a chorus of angels & demons, that takes place inside a kinetoscope.

The second is what happens when a sexually aroused monkey is placed backstage in an opera house.

The Faust Cycle is available as a Creative Commons, free audio release on Headphonica.

Artwork for this single by Rob Henderson.

"The Faust Cycle", more reviews

Ergo Phizmiz's 14 hour audio work "The Faust Cycle", released as free, Creative Commons audio on Headphonica, is continuing to pop up across the wonder of the blogosphere.

From Journey Through a Burning Brain:
"Expect some kind of deeply disturbing, elevating and jolly sound-meditation.. for hours and hours and hours...This thing is a mix of narrated passages which penetrate your mind in a poetry-like, dreamy, collage, trip -like fashion. An intertextual explosion. Interwoven with longer and shorter and longer pieces of, well to keep it simple, music...expect everything."

From Ayeball:
"... this is clearly the work of a singular visionary...A real iPod-strainer at around 2GB in size, but it more than justifies the space and will keep you entertained for hours (at least fifteen of ‘em). As I type, I’m halfway through the second of five chunks, and am utterly enraptured."

Thankyerkindly ...

"The Faust Cycle" - Full broadcast on n0theen Internet Radio

Starting on January 17th and on consecutive Sundays, n0theen radio will be broadcasting the entirety of Ergo Phizmiz's 14 hour "The Faust Cycle" (released Jan 1st on Headphonica), at the following times ....

17.01.2010 18:00 – 21:00 CET (GMT/UTC +1) – chunk 1
24.01.2010 18:00 – 21:00 CET (GMT/UTC +1) – chunk 2
31.01.2010 18:00 – 21:00 CET (GMT/UTC +1) – chunk 3
07.02.2010 18:00 – 21:00 CET (GMT/UTC +1) – chunk 4
14.02.2010 18:00 – 21:00 CET (GMT/UTC +1) – chunk 5

Tune in at notheen.com

"n0theen is an non-profit, commercial free internet radio station (24/7 audio stream) which webcasts Copyleft, Public Domain and Creative Commons music only."

Why download "The Faust Cycle"? 1 - 46

From the merciless addiction that is Twitter, 46 reasons to download Ergo Phizmiz's big, big sound-art piece "The Faust Cycle", which you can grab, freely from Headphonica.



1) It features a string quartet riding bicycles & playing Janacek.
2) We pay a visit to Trimalchio's next dinner party.
3) Marcel Duchamp learns to rap.
4) Latvian songbird Margita Zalite sings Peggy Lee and makes it her own.
5) To hear the sound of a Moses basket made of gurgling babies in a sewer.
6) A walking gramophone.
7) The regular appearance of an 1832 Debain Harmonium.
8) A ukulele song about love and poo.
9) It took three years and nearly made my brain collapse.
10) It can be listened to closely, or allowed to linger in the background.
11) To hear the largest and most ornate bowel movement in history.
12) To hear Pete Um wax lyrical about opera and sing about cassowaries.
13) Where else would you hear a giant exploding pig?
14) To hear a singing child psychiatrist.
15) To hear a mambo duet between God & the Devil.
16) For Helen of Troy's mime-only version of The Iliad.
17) For Igor Stravinsky's stand-up comedy show.
18) If you've nothing better to do, you can nearly pass a whole day.
19) For Bela Emerson's gorgeous cello & electronics improvisations.
20) To hear Joseph Cornell speaking entirely through sound-collage.
21) In order to find out what happens when a train comes to a dinner party.
22) Find out what happens with an aroused monkey backstage in an opera house
23) It has no cryptic references to the number 23.
24) Meet Mr Sausage.
25) It's chock full of brand new pop songs locked within it's fabric.
26) To hear Angela Valid's electroacoustic hell kebabs.
27) What does a piano promenading through a sewer sound like?
28) To hear a mechanical doll careering out of control at 80 mph.
29) For a myriad marble runs.
30) For a TR606 improvising with a rainstorm.
31) To hear James Nye's variations of Erik Satie "An Evening in Hell".
32) Hear the Four Tops covered by Noel Coward and a Country & Western band.
33) Peer into the Devil's pantomime kinetoscopes.
34) It's not created by Simon Cowell. Or is it?
35) To hear me flushing myself down the toilet.
36) Martha Moopette monologues off Cole Porter lyrics.
37) It has no headlice in it.
38) It's an iPod killer!
39) Hear the world gently, gently crack
40) For a malevolent talking Albatross, of course.
41) For insect recordings by Irene Moon, the singing entomologist.
42) Discover how to be a ventriloquist with no talent for doing so.
43) Hear Erich Von Stroheim over and over and over and over and over again.
44) To put Ergo Phizmiz at rest and give his poor, twittering fingers a break. (Contributed by the great Navia of Vanity)
45) Because Vulnavia Vanity says so.
46) For the 1940s style balloon dance of Emperor Rudolf II of Prague.

Great review of The Faust Cycle

"Certainly the most astonishing piece of netaudio I have ever come across ... words like 'epic' do not even begin to describe the mind-boggling expansiveness of this work."

Read the full review at the positively delightful Hiddenplacemusic.

The Faust Cycle - Download from Headphonica

The Faust Cycle
or, The House of Dr Faustus
-Released 1st January 2010 on Headphonica -



Written, Composed, Performed & Produced by
Ergo Phizmiz

Project consultants
James Nye, Martha Moopette, The Travelling Mongoose

One afternoon Ergo Phizmiz finds himself lumbered into delivering a parcel to the house of legendary alchemist and necromancer Dr Johann Faustus who, since the events of some time ago for which he is renowned, has entered into a rather quieter life in a vast, labyrinthine house, with hundreds of lodgers running the gamut from artists, birds, bird-people, walking fictions, ventriloquists, a Cassowary, running chairs, walking gramophones, and myriad automata.



This enormous dream fable, told through speech, songs, collage and sound-design, is the result of over three years delving down various rabbit-holes, and features collaborations in a range of contexts with artists of many disciplines, including Jack Phoenix, Margita Zalite, Pete Um, Angela Valid, Bela Emerson, Martha Moopette, Amie Willingale, and Zenith Pitts.

In glorious radiophonic technicolour, it is a musical-comedy of disorientation and magick, somewhere between nightmare and the half-remembered childhood whimsy of an insomniac music-hall artiste.


Download the entire 15 hours, complete with magnificent artwork from Moritz Grunke and friends, free, from the marvellous Headphonica.


The project is supported by Arts Council England, Soundart Radio, Vaguely Marsupial Productions, VentnorBlog, Quay Arts

"The Faust Cycle" - World Premiere begins tonight on Soundart Radio

Tonight's the night! The first airing of Ergo's 15 hour housebound necromantic food sex alchemy odyssey. Midnight, UK time, end of Monday going into Tuesday, as it were. Then every night till Friday on Soundart Radio.

Nothing left to do but the credits ...

The Faust Cycle

Written, Composed, Performed & Produced by Ergo Phizmiz

Additional writing by Jack Phoenix

'Little Octet for Assorted Tubes & Cones', 'An Evening in Hell' piano work, and
instrumental collaborations on variations of Erik Satie's 'Le Tango Perpetuel' by Jack Phoenix

'Hell Kebabs' electroacoustic work by Angela Valid

Work for Cello & Electronics by Bela Emerson

Field and Insect Recordings by The Travelling Mongoose and Irene Moon

Trumpet parts composed and performed by Mark Upton

Violin solo composed and performed by Amie Willingale

Additional musicians & composers Margita Zalite, Rebecca Robertson and Aaron Islamb

Editing of workshop recordings by Simon Perry



Contains interpretations of music by
Claudio Monteverdi
Carlo Gesualdo
Melchior Franck
Thomas Ravenscroft
The Four Tops
Peggy Lee
Erik Satie
Sergei Prokofiev
Jacques Offenbach
Arthur Sullivan
Georges Bizet
Camille Saint-Saens
J.S. Bach
Charles Tennier
Giuseppe Verdi
Argentian Tango (Un Chien Andalou)
Cole Porter
W.A. Mozart
Bert Kalmar & Harry Ruby



Project consultants Jack Phoenix, The Travelling Mongoose and Martha Moopette



Dr Faustus performed by Zenith Pitts

Eloise performed by Margita Zalite, Rebecca Robertson, Martha Moopette

Gretchen speech devised and performed by Martha Moopette

Dr Faustus in 'Box' operetta performed by Pete Um



Workshops facilitated with Jack Phoenix and Simon Perry, in co-operation with Quay Arts & VentnorBlog



Written & Recorded 2006-2009

Ventnor, Newport, East Cowes, Ryde, Freshwater, Buckfastleigh, Brighton, London (UK)
La Ferriere aux Etangs, La Noe de Fendrement (France)
Tirgu-Mures, Transylvania (Romania)



Thanks to

All the artists involved, Kate, Talulah & Autumn, Jeremy Court, David Fenech, Felix Kubin & Gagarin Records, Vulnavia Vanity, the Faustus of the West Country, Sal & Simon, Matt Johnson, Soundart Radio,Chris, Lucinda, et al, WFMU, Zoe & Storm, Vicki & Peter , Sid & Maz, Jo Hummel Newell & all at Quay, except you know who ...., Penny King & Angela Unsworth at A.c.Eeee, Steven Streight, Chinky Bolin, Soleilmoon, Doyouspeakenglish Radio, Proot Records, Patrick Sims, Sarah & Peter Nelson, Satanicpornocultshop, Tomomi Adachi, Erik Bumbledonk, Anthony Locke

Dedicated to
Joseph Cornell
Ken Campbell
Morecambe & Wise

"The Faust Cycle" - World Premiere of new 15 hour radioplay on Soundart Radio

A new 15 hour adventure for radio from Ergo Phizmiz, supported by Arts Council England, Quay Arts and Ventnor Blog.

Premiering on Soundart Radio, 12-3am from 8th to 12th September

One afternoon Ergo Phizmiz finds himself lumbered into delivering a parcel to the house of legendary alchemist and necromancer Dr Johann Faustus who, since the events of some time ago for which he is renowned, has entered into a rather quieter life in a vast, labyrinthine house, with hundreds of lodgers running the gamut from artists, birds, bird-people, walking fictions, ventriloquists, a Cassowary, running chairs, walking gramophones, and myriad automata.

This enormous dream fable, told through speech, songs, collage and sound-design, is the result of over three years delving down various rabbit-holes, and features collaborations in a range of contexts with artists of many disciplines, including Jack Phoenix, Margita Zalite, Pete Um, Angela Valid, Bela Emerson, Martha Moopette, Amie Willingale, and Zenith Pitts.

In glorious radiophonic technicolour, it is a musical-comedy of disorientation and magick, somewhere between nightmare and the half-remembered childhood whimsy of an insomniac music-hall artiste.

Please note - "The Faust Cycle" is not, necessarily, suitable for sensitive ears at times, containing, as it does, some naughty words, some sexy references, and a healthy smattering of scatological excess.

If you just can't wait, you could do worse than head over and download the free album of instrumental music from The Faust Cycle, "Music From The House of Dr Faustus".

Music from "The House of Dr Faustus"

The first material to be released from Ergo Phizmiz's large scale radio work "The House of Dr Faustus", a real labour of love now nearing completion, has just hit the web!

'Music from "The House of Dr Faustus"' is an hour of new instrumental Ergo Phizmusic created over the last two years, basically the soundtrack album to the radioplay, a Surrealist journey into a house with a depth of hundreds of miles.

It is also the first release displaying Ergo's more recent stylistic developments, with a greater focus on instrumentation and detailed arrangements. "Gretchen's Tango" dreams woozily about on harmoniums and multitracked trumpets, whilst "Music For Darkness" visualises an immense black, timeless space with thumping violas, Cajon and harmonica. Also pay a visit to a "Dream Garden", experience the "Death Dance of David Niven", or sink into the "Music For an Underground Circus".

This release is available in high quality mp3 format, completely free ....

You can stream or download it at the WFMU Free Music Archive.